Friday, August 6, 2010

Last Call

Dick Morris plays the GOP hand far earlier than he should have.  You knew this was the logical endpoint of the whole "any aid to states is evil" crap that the Republicans keep spouting.  Morris gives the whole game away:
As long as the Democrats control Congress, they will continue to rubber-stamp Obama’s requests for bailouts of profligate states. But when the Republicans take control, they will be less than forthcoming. Republicans will ask the central question: Why should taxpayers from states that have cut their budgets and observed spending restraint, pay for the extravagances of the other states? Why should forty-seven states have to pay for California, New York, and Michigan?
Pause.  Reflect.  We're the United States of America.  But Dick Morris has decided we don't need a federal government anymore.  Dick Morris's "central question" is the same one Southerners were asking in 1860, dig?  Should we dissolve this union?  Should we not punish anyone who has a public sector job, because they are being salaried by the taxpayer?  It's time to scapegoat someone, and this is the plan:  such rampant, virulent anti-government rhetoric that the endpoint is literally to take everything from these workers.
The Republican solution to state financial distress should be simple: The Party should insist on a change in the federal bankruptcy law providing for a procedure for state bankruptcy (none now exists). This process must call for abrogation of all state and local public employee union contracts as is usually done in private sector bankruptcies. By freeing states and local governments (including school boards) of their union obligations on wages, work rules, staffing, and pensions, they have a chance to survive and, indeed, to prosper. But merely subsidizing these massive expenditures just prolongs the misery of the states in question.

And there you have the Republican plan:  to strip millions of local and state government workers of everything and to tell everyone else "fend for yourselves, there is no government help anymore."  Randian Libertarian extremism.  Game over.

Like I said, played it too early.  This is all supposed to be the plan AFTER the election.

2 comments:

StarStorm said...

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Dickie-boy is gonna get himself smacked over this one, as someone's going to remind him how much money states like California and New York get from the feds compared to what they give. And then states like, you know, South Carolina? Alaska? Arizona?

You know, just saying, even if you're not suggesting that we dismantle the federal government, this is NOT a road he wants to be going down.

I do imagine Dickie-boy is going to get a massive "shut the fuck up" from his side very soon.

CliffsideGarden said...

here ya go:

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/18/red-state-moochers-federal-taxes-favor-those-who-complain-the-most-about-federal-taxes/

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